Morag McCready's husband Harry was only 41 when he was diagnosed with the incurable neurological condition.
Morag McCready (Image: Tom Dick/Wishaw Press)
Wishaw great-grandma Morag McCready watched cruel killer Parkinson’s slowly tighten its grip on her husband Harry over three long decades.
Harry was only 41 when he was diagnosed with the incurable neurological condition, although doctors believe he had had Parkinson’s since the age of 38.
When her sister commented that Harry was “walking funny,” Morag put it down to arthritis in his knee due to years of high impact sport.
Then came the diagnosis which, for keen sportsman Harry, was a devastating blow.
“We knew nothing about Parkinson’s and back then, there was no computer to go on to find out,” remembers Morag, of North Dryburgh Road.
“The only books I could find on it were more like medical journals and they were more confusing than informative.
“His own doctor knew nothing about Parkinson’s.
“Law Hospital asked if he would be a guinea pig. Every six months we would go up and he would try a new tablet. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t.
“The consultant said: ‘You live with it, so it is up to you to say if the medication is helping or harming.’
“With Parkinson’s, you get along at a level. Medication works for so long – it is a plateau and then a drop. It is very difficult to watch.
“His personality changed. Harry had always been an easy-going person, but he became quite difficult.
“He had dementia when he died, so that was a factor, but so too was the frustration because he had been such an active person, a sportsman.”
Unlike many people who live with Parkinson’s, the condition did not manifest itself in tremors, but Harry did drag a leg – a great frustration for the former West of Scotland cricket player, who was also a keen footballer, football referee and table tennis player.
As wife Morag explains, if there was a ball involved, he played it.
“We would be walking down Wishaw and he would just stop suddenly. He’d freeze and couldn’t move and people would swear at him,” explained Morag, 80.
“There was a shop in Wishaw we went to that had an oil cloth table cover and I’d tell the waitress that my husband was going to make a mess, but she didn’t mind because it could be wiped. He had become clumsy. The last 10 years were bad.”
When Harry began to lose the power of speech, Morag discovered that he was secretly exceeding his medication ahead of visits to his consultant so that he could hide the extent of his slurring.
It was then that his wife had to take charge of the administration of his medicine.
In 1999, Morag and Harry and another couple founded the Parkinson’s Self Help Group, which meets at 95 Main Street, Bellshill, every Friday. It now has around 80 members.
In 2001 - three years before Harry died - Morag knew she was struggling to cope as his carer.
“I didn’t want to be the one to make the decision to put him into a care home. I didn’t want that on my conscience,” admits Morag, who was relieved when Law Hospital took the decision out of her hands.
He had become incontinent, immobile and difficult to live with, and spent his final three years in Cleland Hospital.
Harry passed away in 2004, aged 69.
Morag, chairperson of the self-help group, remembers attending a Parkinson’s conference in Irvine at which seated in the front row were men in their 30s living with the condition.
Shockingly, she is seeing an increase in people in their 50s coming through the door of the Bellshill-based group.
“Because it is a freezing disease, it wasn’t that long ago that they used to just sit them in a room, which is awful because the intellect is the last thing to go,” said Morag, who has eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
“When younger famous people like Michael J Fox get Parkinson’s, people become far more aware of it. It’s been said that because it is a degenerative brain condition, we all get it. It is very cruel.”
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/wishaw-woman-warns-parkinsons-danger-11865122
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